Wasn't That A Time?

This is the autobiography of Robert Schrank who went from Young Communist League member and union activist to management consultant for global corporations. It tells of his childhood in the Bronx German immigrant working-class culture of the 1920s and 1930s. Through his story the reader experiences a community of political and intellectual passion being torn apart as it struggles to deal with the rise of Nazism and the decline of the old radical movement.

Schrank brings to life the events of Party membership and of his role in the rise of industrial nations in the 1930s and 1940s. Schrank writes from the point of view of the rank and file, even when describing his role in the leadership of the New York State Machinsits Union. A rebel in his own land, he was expelled three times from union office though twice returned to memebership by the State Supreme Court.

Convinced by the early 1950s of the failure of socialism in the Soviet Union, he broke with the Party.